Subtitles
by Arwen Lune
Summary: Character studies of our favourite crimefighting, murder resolving team of mismatched heroes.
1. we insist on making it complicated

My first venture in a new fandom. This will be a set of character studies.

_Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  
-- Confucius --_

* * *

I love watching her work. The focus, the intensity.

There's something magical about it.

She'd throw a fit if she could hear me think that. Magic doesn't exist in her universe.

Maybe it's that she has a stunning amount of ways to find out information about the completely wrecked remains of a human life. Every time I see a body so badly damaged and decomposed that it's hardly recognisable as human at all, there is the moment that I _know_ that there's no way we'll ever find out who they were or what happened to them.

Then she comes onto the scene, and proves me wrong.

In this case it's not even a whole human. It's just an arm.

Humerus, radius, ulna, scaphoid, capitate, metacarpals, proximal phalanxes, middle phalanxes, distal phalanxes.

I know these names because once upon a time it was important that I knew how to break each and every one of them.

She collects the bones and reassembles them on her lighted table. To me it's part of a skeleton, kind of like the one we used to have in biology class back in school, but more eerie. It's part of a person with a story and a name. She is better at distancing herself from that. In her labs, the name is 'the victim' or 'the remains'.

At first I found that cold and distasteful, but I understand now. She needs that distance to be able to do her work. A person has to have those shields to be able to excavate mass graves. I could never do that.

She's not so much cold as well-shielded. Anyone wanting to call her lacking in passion? Try stealing some of the bones she works on.

We're different, but that makes this partnership work. I see the big picture, the human side, the murky psychological stuff. She uses her relentless logic on the details, the tenuous connections, the stuff everybody misses because we're too busy fitting the evidence to our theories. Together we've all the angles covered.

She likes to make things complicated. Words, as well. I asked her once why she spent her holidays working, and her explanation needed subtitles. I'm beginning to understand, though. She's really not that complicated – and she's really not that different.

You do what you can. She can't stop the suffering, but she can help find justice for the victims. So she does – in her work, even in her holidays. I mean, who excavates mass graves in her time off? Identifies hurricane victims? She does. She can, so she does, and it's that simple no matter how complicated her reasoning is.

I can help her with finding justice, so I do, because I can and because it's right, and it's just that simple.

God, New Orleans. She called and all I knew was that she was hurt and that I needed to be there. I dropped everything to get to the airport. Would she have an anthropologically sound reasoning to explain that behaviour as well? Probably. To me it was simple. My partner needed me.

But simple isn't always the same as easy.

"This is the right arm of a male, in his mid-forties. Humerus length indicates someone between six foot and six foot two. The Pronator Teres is unusually well-developed. The arm was severed from the body at the top of the humerus; there are marks made by some sort of blunt blade. Zach?"

"Like an axe, but not big enough. I'll compare it to our database of instruments."

She nods to herself.

"Whatever did this must have left markings on the scapula as well. Tissue oxygen saturation indicates that the owner of the arm was still alive at the time of separation."

"No sign of crushing or bondage," Zach adds, poring over the X-rays. "No indication that the arm was somehow trapped, necessitating an amputation."

"Could he still be alive?" I ask.

Bones blinks as if she's forgotten that I'm even in the room. I smile a little.

"If he applied effective pressure to the wound and so limited blood loss, yes. The location was close enough to a road that he might have found help."

"So I'm looking for a tall guy, mid-forties, missing his complete right arm since around 2001. Not necessarily dead."

She doesn't look up, that laser-like focus on the markings on the end of the humerus bone.

"Who used to play the violin."

Like I said, magic.


	2. but a fire to be kindled

I wanted all of these studies in first person, but Brennan refused to talk to me.  
Third person it had to be. A little distant, like the anthropologist observing a subject. Fitting for her, I guess.

_The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.  
-- Plutarch --_

* * *

His mind works in a weird way. It jumps all over the place. Instinct, gut feeling, hunch. _Irrational_. 

He makes up scenarios based on conjecture, picks a version seemingly at random, and assembles what he feels are the main players in that scenario. Then he pushes, and he keeps pushing until something gives.

Considering there is absolutely no rational backing for some – even most - of the choices he makes, she finds it astonishing how often he is right.

Fascinating.

"I don't know what else to look for. We've exhausted our evidence," she hears herself say, frustrated after an all-nighter with no progress to show for it.

"You go—" he puts a hand between her shoulder blades and gently pushes her in the direction of her office, "—have a snooze on your couch. I'm gonna lean on that forester until he tells me something."

"Wait, that's—"

"—completely unfounded and based on conjecture," he supplies with a grin. He loves yanking her chain. It's her secret that she gives him the satisfaction sometimes. "So don't think about it, just have a nap."

Without realising it she has ended up on her office couch, and now that she's horizontal she's suddenly very drowsy.

Booth takes the green comforter from the backrest and spreads it out over her, taking care to cover her feet. Brennan smiles sleepily.

"You're being nice again," she says, before she can catch herself.

He drops the edge of the comforter so that she's covered.  
Scary, huh?" he smirks.

As he closes the door of her office behind him, she hears him say something to the others.

"No one disturbs Bones until I get back. I'm going to spread some pain."

Her eyes drift shut as she smiles. She loves him when he's like this. Mister Fix-It. He doesn't get bogged down in the details of evidence, because he flies straight over the top of the details. It drives her insane nine times out of ten. The remaining time it saves her sanity.

He'll scold her for working too hard, but she knows he's driven, in his own way. She wonders if it is because he feels he has his past to atone for – a cosmic balance to repair. When he first told about that she classed it as another semi-religious belief, an irrational way for human beings to comprehend the incomprehensible.

She doesn't believe there is a God holding a scale with her name on it, like he seems to. She does share the basic human desire to consider herself a good person. Disregarding religious parameters, societies throughout time seem to agree that a good person can be defined as someone who leaves behind more good than evil, who goes outside of the anthropologically defined necessities to help the common good of the species.

She contemplates the differences. Perhaps in the end it is in the explanation.

He learned to get along with her team – even with Zach – in his own way. _He's stopped fulfilling the antagonistic role in my life_, she thinks with a sleepy smile. He has become her partner in more than just semantics.

He still infuriates her sometimes, with his leaps of semi-logic and the way he acts like she doesn't know anything about the real world. Whatever that is. And he has no concept of personal space. She's too hard-headed to step back when he does that, because she refuses to think of herself as someone who backs off. So when they argue it's usually when they stand about a foot apart, and she can feel his breath as he speaks and his bodyheat through their clothes. She wonders if he notices that.

Knowing how observant he is, she refuses to entertain the possibility that he doesn't.

She's more than willing to argue with him about music, where to go for lunch, her supposedly alien view of the world, his driving habits, and a hundred other topics. But she tries not to say the things that will hurt him, though she knows she slips up sometimes.

She knows he is self-conscious about his education when he's around her team, so she's learned to dial down the scientific terms when he is around. Not enough to arouse his suspicions - she hopes - but enough that he can follow the exchanges and doesn't feel shut out. Hodgins has taken her cue, and she thinks Zach, too, is starting to do the same.

When she saw him on her return from Guatemala, she would never have guessed they would learn to work together so well. And not just work. He's become her friend – how unexpected is that? – and she values his presence in his life. She trusts him, and cares for him, and she no longer feels alone.


End file.
